Opioid analgesics such as morphine are therapeutically useful, but their usage is strictly limited because of their side effects such as drug dependency and abuse. Thus, analgesics with high usefulness and reduced tendency to cause drug dependency are desired. Considerable pharmacological and biochemical studies have been carried out to discover the opioid peptides and opioid receptors, and the discovery of the subtype of opioid receptor such as mu (.mu.), delta (.delta.), kappa (.kappa.) in a variety of species, including human, has made a beginning towards creating new analgesics. As it is thought that opioid analgesics such as morphine act as a mu-receptor agonist, separating the action based on a kappa-receptor agonist from the action based on mu-receptor agonist has been investigated. Recently kappa-selective agonists (kappa-agonists) have been reported from the above viewpoint for example, EMD-61753: A. Barber et al., Br. J. Pharmacol., Vol. 113, pp. 1317-1327, 1994. Some of them actually have been studied in clinical trials (Med. Res. Rev., Vol. 12, p. 525, 1992).
European Patent No. EP 0254545 B1 discloses a variety of ethylenediamine compounds. European Patent No. EP 0483580 A2 discloses a variety of pyrrolidine compounds as analgesics. International Publication WO 96/30339 discloses a wide variety of pyrrolidinyl hydroxamic acid compounds as selective kappa-receptor agonists.